Although the title of my article points to e-Commerce, the techniques that is mentioned here can be used in any sector on any platforms. e-Commerce is used to explain better with the following example. You may find countless business plans and templates on internet for your ebterprise and they are very easy to adapt for […]

Earned Value Management (EVM or EVA) tracks how the project sticks the project plan in the scale of time and budget. To lie and give very optimistic answers like “Very well”, “we’re progressing through the plan”, “perfect” to the top management and sponsor who asks about the project is also a way. But this method […]

Estimation is a frequently occurring phenomenon in our everyday lives. When we leave home for the office in the morning, we roughly estimate the time it will take to reach the office. When we plan to make a business analysis presentation in a meeting, we estimate the time it will take to complete the presentation, […]

The Top-Down Method is useful for quickly estimating the total resources required for a project, and allocating this total to lower-level project activities. This gives initial estimates for each of the various activities or subsystems. These estimates may be sufficient for early planning. Top-Down Method may be used to estimate effort, cost, and schedule (or […]

Bottom-up estimation is based on a breakdown of the project into individual elements, each of which is estimated separately. Project elements could consist of individual requirements, tasks, or deliverables from a work breakdown structure, or counts of items such as classes, program modules, or test cases. The estimates for the individual elements are then compiled […]

COCOMO is classified as a composite model which relies on analytic techniques, statistical data fitting, and expert judgment. COCOMO was developed primarily using experience from large, specification-built software developed in the late 1970s and early 1980s. These projects served as the basis for fitting a number of duration estimation equations to different functional forms. Experience […]

Almost all engineering disciplines depend on the basic premise of being able to measure the various parameters with which that specific branch of engineering deals. For example, civil engineers can measure various civil structures using the metric system of measurement; electrical engineers can measure through units like watts, volts, amperes, etc.; and mechanical engineers measure […]

The Delphi technique is an organized way to help a group of informed experts achieves a consensus on an estimated value. It is an iterative process consisting of a series of rounds. In each round, every expert in the group anonymously and independently estimates the value of an item. No person knows the values provided […]

PERT is probabilistic and stochastic in that variability is considered in the duration of each activity. It means PERT assumes that the duration of each activity is represented by a random variable with a known probability density function. (Lee D.E., 2005, pp: 310 – 318) The PERT technique uses additional information from the estimator […]

There are at least four reasons why the algorithmic models do not perform well. First, there is the problem of software sizing. Obtaining consistent size estimates (in lines of code or Function Points) and interpreting such estimates require high skill levels and good judgment. Second, there is the issue of historical data. Most researchers have […]